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Grant's May 2022 Update
@jude. Oh dear!
I will not get into an exchange about this topic but since you put some time into this comment, I will reply and end this subject hopefully with your agreement.
You are riding a high and fast horse, and so does wavy, when a relaxing stroll would do nicely.
In the last two years we have had a very clear example of how “religious” the science has become. Media messages to ‘trust the science’ were playing like a broken record. Pfizer tried to get a 75 years old injunction for covid-19 trial data and expected us to *trust them. The viruses have never been isolated in a manner that would show beyond the shadow of a doubt that they exist and cause disease. We are asked to trust the virology; trust scientific studies that have apparent mistakes and misrepresentations (Ben Goldacre, Prof. J. Ioannidis), trust the men in white coats, etc. So this is what I meant about the same modus operandi - this faith we are asked to have in bad science and even worse scientific studies. 21 century bastardised what could have been an excellent system to uncover the secrets of life.
I have nothing against religions (I studied them in details and find them fascinating) and used this comparison to indicate that we have been asked to apply religious faith to science.
Jude please make yourself a cup of tea and relax, and then use your eloquence where you can make a difference. I noticed that my words are often misinterpreted by people who exhibit strict, logical style of thinking which does not lend itself to imagination. I am an artist and use words to paint pictures, many of them abstract - and it takes a large dose of creative power to see the form I portray. I will attempt to be more disciplined in my expressions especially when exchanging ideas with people who need facts and citations to communicate.
PS. Your conclusions give me headache. Interesting how God and religion seems to be synonymous to you. BTW, this aspect of faith is very clearly visible in Islam when Allah and the religion of Islam are strongly intertwined and one doesn’t exist without the other. In many indigenous traditions they are far apart. People are able to communicate with their gods apart of religion.
Lastly, poor you for never experiencing the evidence of god. I see and feel god’s presence everywhere I look but mostly within. I am not religious.
I've been a scientist, a visual artist, and a musician for as far back as I can remember. I can appreciate abstraction, and my art is always based on some level of abstraction. Nobody who knows me in person would say that I lack imagination. You can't excuse your comments/thinking based on abstraction and art. There is nothing to call it but illogical (at times), and as I just suggested, it is entirely possible to be logical, artistic, abstract, imaginative, and creative all at the same time. In fact, the best scientists embody these qualities even if they do not produce "art" in the form that we usually think of as being art.
People like @jude and I try to make our logic extremely clear and as airtight as possible so as to create a cogent framework for our opinions. You seem to react to our logical assault on illogical thought by saying things like "you are riding a high and fast horse", or "poor you for never experiencing the evidence of god", or "please make a cup of tea and relax". Do you not see how that tends to redouble our efforts to point out the flaws in your thinking? Instead of providing a legitimate rebuttal, you are essentially resorting to handwaving and name-calling (I know you're not literally calling us names, but it is often implied).
All that said, I'm glad to hear that your health is improving, you've found a better path, and I hope you can put your time and energy to better use than arguing on this forum! Best of luck, be well.
Your thinking seems to be largely in line with my own from what I've seen so far...I wonder why it is you've concluded that virology is pseudoscience?
Have you ever listened to Bret Weinstein, who I mentioned earlier in this thread? I realize that everyone is fallible, but in Bret I feel that I've found the model scientist (and possibly model human being), and I find it very hard to believe that an esteemed evolutionary biologist such as he would not have seen through such blatant errors in the field of virology if they actually existed. I've been listening to him since the beginning of the pandemic and I've seen him question all kinds of things, but never come close to questioning the veracity of viruses.
Again, it's always possible that he has overlooked it, but highly improbable considering his expertise and the lengthy discussions he's had with people like Geert Vanden Bossche, Robert Malone, Peter McCullough, and and Peter Cory.
@wavygravygadzooks
The reason why I think virology is pseudo science is because I read 2 books Virus Mania and What Really Makes You Ill. If you read these two books then you will understand why I'm convinced virology is a pseudoscience. I also have a laundry list of books that question viral theory that I haven't yet read that I'm planning to read. But I think those two books are the most comprehensive books on the subject of arguments against virology and the germ theory of disease.
But there is a much bigger and much deeper argument that goes a bit beyond the content of the above books. What is the root cause of all known diseases? In my opinion, all chronic diseases are caused by chronic poisonings. Autoimmune diseases, as Grant Genereux hypothesizes, are most likely chronic poisoning some of which involve retinoic acid poisoning and some of which don't. Dr. Paul Saladino has a video in which he talks about how the increase in the consumption of beet root products and animals that consume beet root is most likely the primary cause of Multiple Sclerosis - a so-called "autoimmune" disease that affects the nervous system. This one example of an autoimmune disease not being caused by retinoic acid, but by some other poison such as the AZE protein from beet roots (the sugar beet plant).
This brings me to Bret Weinstein. You cite Bret Weinstein as a scientist that you follow and respect. Are you referring to Bret Samuel Weinstein, a professor of biology at Evergreen State College, as listed on Wikipedia? According to Wikipedia, Bret Weinstein believes that ivermectin can prevent or cure Covid-19 or its symptoms. And Bret Weinstein is the guy behind the Dark Horse Podcast. I cannot listen to the entire Dark Horse Podcast, but if you recommended 1 or 2 videos from the podcast that encapsulate Weinstein's views on Covid-19 then I would be willing to listen to it. If Wikipedia's characterization of Weinstein's beliefs about ivermectin are accurate then here is my counter argument to Weinstein's perspective o the use of ivermectin as a treatment for covid-19.
First of all, if anyone (including Weinstein) believes that there is a financial conspiracy to encourage the use of vaccines instead of ivermectin, then they need to consider the fact that ivermectin is a patented drug. The patent holders for ivermectin are Merck and Co Inc, McNeil PPC Inc. Merk also happens to be a vaccine manufacturer. Ivermectin, just like any vaccine, can be used multiple times and every single time one experiences a flu/covid-19 symptoms. If one argues that one is getting covid-19 symptoms because of not being vaccinated i.e. because of a vaccine deficiency, then one could also argue that one is getting sporadic flu symptoms because of an ivermectin deficiency.
I can see only two logical reasons as to why Merk would invest more time and energy into promoting its vaccines than its ivermectin. The first reason would likely be that if Merk were to say that ivermectin is more effective than its own patented vaccine and the vaccines of its competitors, it would have to spend more on advertising and on lobbying the US congress than all the money that its competitors have spent lobbying congress and marketing their own vaccines. Vaccinations have been prescribed for more than 200 years and overturning such a tradition through advertising and lobbying would be astoundingly expensive, difficult and very risky. The second reason is that Merk does not have to spend even a single penny convincing the world that vaccines are safe and effective when the US government through the CDC is already willing to do that on its and its competitors behalf. The CDC claims that it spend $3 billion on vaccine awareness (or vaccine propaganda as I like to think of it).
Secondly, according to Wikipedia ivermectin is a horse de-wormer and an anti-parasite medication. Ivermectin is, by definition, a poison used to kill parasites, which brings me to my next point. Can you poison yourself into better health? Can you really poison yourself out of a flu? And every time you experience a flu, should you poison yourself into better health with ivermectin? Is treating the common cold really just the same process as treating cancer with chemotherapy? Is the most effective way to treat cancer to poison the whole human body in the hope that the cancer cells will die, before the patient dies?
We can debate the causes of covid-19 symptoms and even the factual correctness of various medical definitions of covid-19, but what really matters is whether or not the entire human population is suffering from various drug deficiencies that makes it not only susceptible to acute viral diseases, but also chronic diseases such as cancer, diabetes and so-called "autoimmune" diseases.
I need to also mention that there is still an ongoing hypothesis that some cancers and, perhaps, all known cancers are caused by viruses. This is something that was discussed in a book by Jason Fung called the Cancer Code.
Let's keep following the logic of this ivermectin treatment plan. Ivermectin is a poisonous drug. In fact, all pharmaceutical drugs are poisons. Here is the medical definition of a poison:
a substance that, on ingestion, inhalation, absorption, application, injection, or development within the body, in relatively small amounts, may cause structural or functional disturbance.
We can equate "structural or functional disturbance" with any interference with the human body's metabolism and digestion of nutrients.
Furthermore, pharmaceutical drugs are really just isolated and purified toxic plant compounds. Traditional herbal remedies are, therefore, just impure poisons yet to be refined by modern pharmaceutical technology. Modern medicine believes that the only way to prevent or treat disease is to poison oneself into better health with purified plant compounds. Traditional herbal medicine (ancient Chinese and Ayurvedic medicine) believes that the only way to treat or prevent disease is to poison oneself into better health with raw toxic plant foods. Some people in the alternative health community believe that plant compounds provide hormesis i.e. a level of poisoning that is beneficial to human health.
If a pharmaceutical drug is not a poison then it is either inert i.e. does nothing but pass through your body like liquid paraffin, or is, in fact, not a drug, but a nutrient. But pharmaceutical products that are not referred to as drugs are called "supplements". Some supplements have such powerful long-term toxicity effects that we might as well as just called them unregulated or poorly regulated drugs. Is accutane a drug or a supplement? It's marketed as a drug, but since retinoic acid is considered an essential vitamin, it is technically a supplement marketed as a drug.
Now back to ivermectin. Does ivermectin create hormesis? Should all medical research scientists really just spend every waking moment of their lives looking for drugs that can create beneficial hormesis? If germ theory and virology are wrong then antiviral and antiparasitic drugs do not provide any kind of hormesis and are pointless poisons that kill. But what about other drugs? What about metformin and the various statin drugs? Do metformin and various statins provide beneficial hormesis? If the theory of food-based and drug-based hormesis is wrong, then all plant foods are poisons that humans consume for fun or amusement or mouth pleasure and drugs are just poisons that humans consume to counteract the effects of the other poisons they consumed from plant foods.
In my opinion, modern medicine entails consuming pharmaceutical grade poisons to counteract the effects of the poisonous plant foods that you consume. There is no book that comprehensively debunks or even discusses the idea of plant-based or drug-based hormesis. I've never seen an alternative health practitioner or doctor equate plant-based hormesis with drug-based hormesis, but they are really one and the same thing, because pharmaceutical drugs are made from purified toxic plant compounds.
Because I believe that all drugs and all plants are poisons, I think that the idea of treating viral diseases with drugs is nonsensical and illogical. While I'm curious as to how ivermectin affects or alleviates covid/flu symptoms, I'm also very skeptical of it or any other plant-toxin based pharmaceutical drug having curative properties.
Again, your thinking seems to largely be in line with my own. I have been arguing on this and other forums for a long time now that the carnivore diet appears to be the best cure-all for any chronic disease, as well as the best preventative measure against disease, because it makes the body as robust as possible by supplying the nutrients it needs without any of the poisons you would get from consuming plants. By doing that, the self-correcting nature of the body will likely fix itself without us trying to interfere using sub-optimal pharmaceuticals and "biohacks".
Similarly, I think pharmaceuticals and herbal medicines should be avoided to the greatest extent possible, except when the potential benefits outweigh the tradeoffs. And this is a key point that Bret Weinstein repeatedly makes - everything has tradeoffs, and the best decision depends on appropriately weighing the tradeoff at hand. Thus, his recommending Ivermectin as both a treatment and a prophylaxis for Covid is based on his judgement (at the time) that the body is likely to suffer worse damage from Covid than from using Ivermectin in certain dosages. However, he updates his judgement based on new information, so given that the latest dominant strains of SARS-COV-2 appear to have milder outcomes, I wouldn't be surprised if Bret no longer recommends Ivermectin prophylactically for people without co-morbidities, but instead only recommends it as a treatment depending on the immune response of the individual - if the person has virtually no symptoms, then he probably wouldn't recommend it. But he clearly thinks that Ivermectin represents such little hazard to the body (based on the existing body of knowledge) that there is almost no case in which it wouldn't be likely to offer more benefit than harm.
Yes, Ivermectin is known as an anti-parasitic treatment, but that doesn't mean it isn't effective in treating other ailments. Many pharmaceuticals have been found to have justifiable "off-label" uses. Just because we discover its effect on one thing doesn't preclude it having an effect on something else. And yes, the way many or most medicines function is through their toxic effects, but if the alternative is suffering for years or decades with a parasitic infection, or straight up dying, then it obviously makes a lot of sense to take a small dose of poison to avoid those far worse outcomes.
The patent on Ivermectin expired in 1996. This is the most common reason cited for the suppression of its use in treating Covid. Merck can make way more money by selling vaccines and novel treatments than Ivermectin, as can all of the other people involved in the current profiteering "scams". The fewer people using Ivermectin, the more people in need of alternative treatments. There are a shitload of people out there with co-morbidities that need pharmaceuticals to defend themselves until they decide to fix their diet and lifestyle.
What you don't seem to understand is that eating "cleanly" does not prevent disease outright. You can still die from a pathogenic infection on a carnivore diet. You can still contract malaria and all the other tropical diseases. You can still acquire intestinal parasites. This is why herbal medicine exists - it is extremely useful in the right circumstances when applied appropriately. The problem is that people eat shit diets and live in polluted environments and most of them think it's easier to medicate with plants and pharmaceuticals than to eat a better diet and live a better lifestyle.
Herbal medicine and pharmaceuticals have nothing to do with hormesis. They serve a role in preventing death when death comes knocking, and in making people more comfortable if that is their choice. Obviously, it is best to eat an optimal diet and live an optimal lifestyle so that you minimize your need for medicine, but I guarantee that every person will have at least one event in life that would benefit from the use of medicine, no matter how good their diet and lifestyle is, and denying the appropriate use of medicine in that event because its "toxic" is as idiotic as a person denying the use of medicine and technology because they have faith that god will heal them without it.
It's really hard to pick a single Darkhorse Podcast as an example, but an obvious starting point would be his discussion with Robert Malone and Steve Kirsch (which I can't locate now because it's been scrubbed from the internet...fucking "fact checkers"!!!), or his discussion with Peter McCullough, or his discussion with Geert Vanden Bossche.
Lastly, I hope you're not still eating that chicken that was causing you constipation. Unless that's literally all you can afford, it's kind of ridiculous to be arguing what you're arguing and at the same time be eating super low quality meat because it's cheap. I am fortunate enough to have enough money to spend on, and have access to, high quality meat, but I also recognize that that's where most of my money should be spent in the first place, so I don't shy away from spending whatever it takes to get high quality meat.
I'm curious what your take is on high fat diets in a carnivore setting? Dr. Smith says high fat diets produce cholestasis (liver congestion) and that humans were never designed to eat high fat diets. Yet a lot of people seem to do pretty well with them, reversing liver issues.
If I had a nickel for every time Smith said something stupid...
It's pretty clear that humans evolved to eat fat as our main source of energy (lots of videos to watch about this, Miki Ben-Dor's explanation is a good one to start with). If humans evolved to subsist on animal meat and fat, then it makes zero sense why eating those things would worsen illness (as long as your body is in a state where it can actually digest and absorb them without an acquired immune response getting in the way).
If people respond poorly to animal fat, I would suggest it is most likely because it is causing detox (something that I believe I've been experiencing while detoxing excess Vitamin A from peripheral storage sites), or it's because they are not digesting it. Some people do legitimately have cholestasis and will have trouble digesting fat and expelling toxins until they resolve that cholestasis, but unlike what Smith claims, the literature indicates that cholestasis is often the result of Vitamin A deficiency, not toxicity. And it probably results from a lack of fat in the diet (and therefore lack of bile flow, lack of cholesterol needed to generate bile salts, and lack of fat-soluble vitamins).
Smith likes to say that there are toxins in animal fats, which is obviously possible in the polluted world we live in, but he ignores the fact that plants are chock full of both natural toxins and any environmental toxins that might wind up in animal tissue...would you rather eat plants that generate their own endogenous toxins and assimilate exogenous toxins with virtually no filter mechanism to prevent it, or would you rather eat the meat and fat of an animal harboring gut bacteria that destroy most of the plant toxins they consume and whose liver does a damn good job of preventing any remaining toxins from getting stored in the muscle and fat? Eating the fat of a high level carnivore like a polar bear or a seal would be a lot riskier than eating the fat from an herbivore, and I certainly wouldn't recommend eating the meat of a higher level predator, but ungulates are probably the ideal source of human nutrition.
Smith's approach to detox is low and slow. It's fair to say that you don't want to intentionally overwhelm your body with an outpouring of toxins from storage in the tissues, but it seems stupid to push fiber and charcoal and keep people running on a glucose-based metabolism when the consumption and use of fat for energy is what is going to ultimately get all of the stored up toxins out of people's bodies and return their metabolism to normal. As I've said many times before, I think Smith is completely wrong in claiming that you will reabsorb toxins without fiber to bind them...the long-term carnivore folks and extended fasters prove this. You're going to reabsorb toxins if you have gut dysbiosis, but the way to deal with that is primarily by removing plant foods from the diet and ensuring that you are digesting meat and fat properly. I'm sure this is a tiny place for the use of fiber in medicine, but I reject the general notion that it's necessary or beneficial.
Ok thanks for your reply. The part about fiber in particular. All the beans I ate really messed me up, thinking I was just detoxing but I think it was all the antinutrients. I'm shifting to a much more meat and animal based diet and have tried taking fiber supplements and also charcoal. The charcoal made me SUPER gassy, like I was producing copious non-stop amounts of gas that didn't seem right. Your comments help me to feel like less of a freak 🙂
Sure thing. I feel like any fiber I've tried has just made my gas and GI issues worse during my low Vitamin A journey. Charcoal is basically just burnt fiber with strange hydrophobic properties...useful for acute poisonings and binding things that you're actively eating, but probably not useful for much else, and it seems likely to just muck up digestion and intestinal transit when used long-term.
Were you soaking/rinsing your beans, pressure cooking them in a bunch of water, and then draining off the excess water? I've heard that helps some people digest them a lot better, although I haven't tried it myself (I've personally stayed away from beans for the past 15 years). Definitely need to take the extra effort to process plants properly if you do decide to eat them, otherwise you're bound to get digestive problems 🙁 Generally, some combination of peeling, deseeding, soaking/sprouting/fermenting, and boiling/draining is needed to eat them "safely".
@wavygravygadzooks
You seem to believe that medicines can prevent death when taken for both an acute life threatening condition and for a long-term life threatening condition. This is what you said:
"And yes, the way many or most medicines function is through their toxic effects, but if the alternative is suffering for years or decades with a parasitic infection, or straight up dying, then it obviously makes a lot of sense to take a small dose of poison to avoid those far worse outcomes."
Some medical doctors such as Carolyn Dean and naturopaths such as Gary Null argue that pharmaceutical drugs and so called "medicines" are toxic and kill people especially when continually taken over the long-term. And carnivore doctors such as Dr. Anthony Chaffe argue that dispensing drugs that have serious side effects such as statins which deplete CoQ Enzyme 10, a decifiency of which may lead to Alzheimer's disease, without providing a CoQ Enzyme 10 supplement is medical malpractice. Carolyn and Gary argue in their books that drugs are the leading cause of medical deaths in the United States.
Carolyn wrote Death by Modern Medicine: Seeking Safe Solutions
And Gary wrote Death by Medicine.
These two books are on my reading list, but I haven't yet read them.
The books I previously mentioned such as Virus Mania argue that HIV-AIDs drugs are extremely toxic and are killing people. They argue that AIDs drugs are so toxic even when consumed acutely (one-off consumption) and they do absolutely nothing to relieve symptoms in the short-term or long-term.
I've interacted chemists quite a bit over the past year, because of my progressively worsening medical condition (DSD) and because of smaller health problems such as gingivitis (likely from vitamin A toxicity from my excessive ghee consumption and high carb diet). When I was in a particularly bad financial situation I was eating a high carb diet to save money and I was getting a lot of headaches and some minor gingivitis. Whenever I bought aspirin and other pain killers too many times from a local pharmacy, the pharmacists working there warned me that the drugs are toxic when consumed chronically.
My personal experiences and some information I have encountered so far have lead me to believe that all pharmaceutical drugs are toxic and life-threatening when consumed indefinitely. There was one-time that I felt I was going to die from hypotension and dizziness after having taken Tamsulosin for only few days. I made the mistake of taking Tamsulosin after exercising on an empty stomach in a my apartment bloc's gym. But I already felt that my vision was blurring and that I was going to pass out and not wake up. Yes, I did not take the medication correctly. But look at how careful I have to be with this obviously toxic medication.
I'm not a medical doctor and I have not read anything on the efficacy and safety of Ivermectin. But since it is commonly believed to be a poisonous substance, I must ask you what exactly is the mechanism of action by which ivermectin will save someone from life-threatening flu/covid symptoms? How exactly does ivermectin save lives and under what conditions will ivermectin save lives? What is the evidence that ivermectin has saved lives?
You also said:
"They serve a role in preventing death when death comes knocking, and in making people more comfortable if that is their choice. "
What other medications actually save lives? Can you give concrete examples of how medications save lives and the mechanism of actions by which lives were saved? I'm asking, because you insisted that this is, indeed, the case. Please provide me with medical case studies from scientific journals. If you want to use a personal experience then you must prove with a medical study how exactly a particular medicine saved your life in the context of that personal experience. Otherwise I have no reason to believe you.
It should be obvious that so called medicines don't make people feel more comfortable when they are taken for an indefinite period of time. All medications have side effects and no matter what does they are dispensed at those side effects will eventually emerge as long as the patient keeps taking those medications. And if you keep lowering the dose of the drugs, eventually the drugs will be entirely ineffective and you will just have expensive urine. Even a "minimally effective dose" when taken chronically can have ill-effects. The question is how those ill-effects will manifest. There is also such a thing as "silent poisoning". High carb diets, especially high fructose diets as explained by Robert Lustig and other medical doctors, silently poison the liver and until the patient one day finds himself in unbearable pain from liver cirrhosis.
I have encountered too many people in my life who just assume things to be true and don't bother to look at the primary evidence (the firsthand evidence) with their own eyes.
You also make a fallacious argument:
"but I guarantee that every person will have at least one event in life that would benefit from the use of medicine, no matter how good their diet and lifestyle is, and denying the appropriate use of medicine in that event because its "toxic" is as idiotic as a person denying the use of medicine and technology because they have faith that god will heal them without it."
I have taken, on quite a few occasions, anti-flu medicines (non-covid ones) that were entirely ineffective. I rarely ever get colds or flus in my life (it was usually about once a year). And nowadays, I watch my family members get flus while I remain free of covid symptoms (I see covid-19 as a rebranding of the common cold). But I have rarely experienced success with anti-flu medicines including anti-mucus medications. I have had success with anti-headache medications, but I solved that my many headaches by drinking more water and eating less carbs.
It is also only idiotic to deny the use of medicine to treat an acute or chronic disease if the person deciding whether to use modern "medicine" has vast knowledge of the health benefits of doing so, but still decides not to do so. I do not have such knowledge and that is why I must ask you to present evidence that pharmaceutical drugs actually save lives. I have honestly not encountered any convincing evidence that pharmaceutical drugs save any lives be it for covid-19 (flu) symptoms, heart disease, cancer, diabetes etc. What I have seen is that many doctors wholeheartedly believe that pharma drugs are somehow useful when treating acute or chronic disease. That is what they learned in university, so obviously that is what their profession requires them to believe. And they must also believe that pharma drugs are somehow useful if they intend to hold on to their medical licenses.
Can you provide me with just one medical case study in a medical journal or scientific journal of someone who died from pain and could have been saved by pain killer medication? Saving lives is far more important than providing personal comfort. I think honest doctors and alternative health practitioners should just tell their patients the following: "change your diet or die a slow painful and miserable death". If the patient chooses death, then I don't see how such a doctor would be at fault or why a doctor willing to say such a thing should insist that the patient take toxic medications. I don't think that in all possible scenarios that doing something is better than doing nothing, unless the doctor is just trying to deal with legal problems.
I have often seen on the internet that doctors believe that pain medication can save lives. But I have never seen a doctor provide any evidence for this claim. If I had chronic pain, I would want pain medication all the time, but I would also want to end my own life in that scenario and I would not believe that such anti-pain medication is improving my life in any conceivable way. I'm not sympathetic to those who want to consume toxic drugs to relieve their pain and suffering, because I believe suicide is almost always a viable option, unless the patient is paralyzed or comatose and needs assisted suicide.
What I really care about is whether or not pharma drugs actually save lives. Is there a book on this topic? If you can find such a book, I will add it to my reading list and I will consider you a very well learned individual.